Hot Spot (19 page)

I went for him, but he saw it in my face before I got started. His hand slipped inside the shirt, under his right armpit, and came out with it. It was a woman’s gun, a little pearl-handled automatic, not as big as his hand as he let it rest in his lap, but there’s no difference between being killed with one of them and with a .45 unless it’s prestige you’re after.

I slid back and left him alone.

“N
OW,” HE SAID, “LET’S TALK
about the geetus.”

He’d deliberately needled me into lunging for him so he could flash that gun. It made him feel better—that and the way he had sucked me out of position with that simpleton act of his.

“Let’s get this straight,” I said. “You really expect me to give you five thousand dollars I haven’t got and a Buick that doesn’t belong to me?”

He shook his head. “Let’s cut out the horsing around. You go dig up that dough from wherever you hid it and slice me five grand off the little end, nothing bigger than twenties. Then you make out the papers on this car, take mine in on the down payment, and you can take care of the notes any way you want.

“You see, pal,” he went on, “you’re in a worse spot than it looks like at first. Remember what you told me? If I didn’t quit touching Goldilocks for a sawbuck now and then for beer money you’d slap me around till I started shuffling my feet and talking back to the bedbugs. Because you’d be around here to do it. But the catch is, you won’t. You’ll be up the river trying to think up a spiel to give the parole board in 1971, and wondering how Sweetie-pie is making out in the sawbuck department.

“You catch on? I can’t lose either way. But you sure as hell can if you don’t go along with me. So just shell out, like I told you, and I’ll take off for the Coast. You’ll still have half of it left, so you can settle down and join the Chamber of Commerce and talk about the dirty crooks in Washington.”

And I’d thought he was stupid. I sat there feeling the sick emptiness inside me and listening to him drive the nails in it one at a time. He had me any way I could turn, and he wasn’t bluffing. As he said, he won either way. There wasn’t any way out. They still might not prove it when they picked me up again, but all the odds were on their side. They’d know now for sure and without any doubt at all, and there wouldn’t be anybody to spring me this time before the questions drove me crazy. Harshaw would fire me, and Dolores Harshaw might have to get on the stand and admit she’d lied. All that business would come out, and it’d settle me with Gloria. He was right. There not only wasn’t any way he could lose; there wasn’t any way I could win.

“Look,” I said at last, “how do I know you’ll go?”

“You don’t, pal.” He tried to grin with that messed-up face. “You’ll just have to take my word for it.”

“Well, geez,” I said. “I’ve got to have a little time. I’ve got to think it over. You’re pulling all this stuff on me, and I can’t figure out whether I’m up or down—”

“There’s nothing to think over. Just take my word for it, pal. You’re down.”

“Yeah, but—Look. I’m not admitting a thing, understand, but even if I had that kind of money it’d take me a while to get hold of it. And the car—It’s almost noon Saturday, and we can’t get the paper-work done on it today.”

“That’s all right. I notice there’s a dent in the right rear fender, anyway, and I want that fixed. I’m not in that big a hurry; I can pick it up from you on Monday. You’re not going anywhere; you know what’ll happen if you try to run.”

He stopped talking and turned to look at me out of eyes sunk back in that scrambled and puffed-up face. “A real neat package,” he said. “Isn’t it, pal?”

The long, hot Saturday afternoon was an endless hell of sitting at the desk looking at papers I didn’t even see while everything tumbled around me. The finishing touch had come at noon, when I picked Gloria up to take her to lunch. One glance at her face was all it took. He’d been to see her too. We sat in a booth in the crowded restaurant, unable to talk about it for fear of being overheard, while we looked at the ruin of everything we had planned. She couldn’t know what he’d told me, and I didn’t say anything about it, but she didn’t have to to understand the spot we were in. All that mattered was that he was back again for more and all our bright ideas for getting the books straightened out by November or any other time were shot to hell. I tried to cheer her up, but it was useless.

I’d see her that night, but what was the use? What could I say? That he’d promised to leave, and go to California? That was too stupid to repeat. There was a fat chance he’d go off and leave a gravy-train like this. This was just the opening wedge. He’d stick around until he got it all, and then he’d stay right on, milking both of us for what we made or what we had to steal to keep his big mouth shut.

Why had he waited all this time? I couldn’t even figure that out. I shuffled unseen papers in the heat, thinking, going around and around in the same smooth rut from which there was no escape. I hadn’t even got to the worst part of it yet. Suppose he got the money. Suppose he got all of it. That still wasn’t it.
It
was what was going to happen the minute he got his hands on it. He’d start throwing it around, making a big show around the beer joints and pool halls, and that was exactly what that cold-eyed Sheriff was waiting for, some citizen with too much sudden prosperity. They’d pick him up, and to get out from under he’d tell ’em where he got it. So in paying him off to keep out of jail, I’d just be buying a one-way ticket right into the place.

I picked her up a little after seven and we drove out into the country and parked the car on a side road. I held her in my arms for a long time, not talking, and at last she stirred a little and looked up at me so hopelessly it was like a knife turning inside me.

“He wanted five hundred dollars,” she said.

“Did you give it to him?”

“Not yet,” she said dully. “I told him we didn’t have it in the safe, and the bank was closed.”

“Good,” I said. “We’ll think of something.”

“We have to, Harry,” she said. “He said he’d go away. He said he was going out west. If we give it to him, maybe he’ll stay away.”

I wasn’t thinking, or I’d have kept my big mouth shut. “Like hell he will. Blackmailers are all the same. Every bite is always the last—until the next one.”

“I know. But what can we do? He
might
go.”

“He won’t. And we won’t get anywhere by paying him. The thing to do is stop him.”

“But how?” she asked frantically. Then she thought of something. “Harry, did you do that to his face? I never saw anything so—so horrible.”

“Yes,” I said. “I won’t lie to you. I did it. And a fat lot of good it did.”

“I hate that sort of thing, Harry. You won’t do it again, will you?”

“All right. It didn’t do any good, anyway.”

“We’ll just have to give him what he wants, and hope he’ll leave.”

“He’ll never leave if you give him what he wants,” I said.

“Then you don’t want me to give him the money?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Don’t give him anything till I tell you to.”

“What are you going to do, Harry?”

“I don’t know yet, baby. I just don’t know.”

“Darling, please tell me why you don’t want to give it to him. Isn’t that the best thing to do?”

“It’s the very worst thing we could do. The way to get a blackmailer off your back is to stop him, not pay him.”

“What do you mean? How can we stop him?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “But you just leave it to me.”

I took her home around midnight and went back to the rooming house. I lay in bed thinking about it, and after a while I was conscious that I was no longer wondering what to do. I was thinking of how to do it. Sometime during the afternoon or evening I had already arrived at the only answer there could ever be to Sutton. I was going to kill him.

How?

The match flared as I lighted another cigarette. I could see the face of the wrist watch. It was nearly two-thirty.

There was no use trying to kid myself. It was dangerous, it was dangerous as hell. I thought of that Sheriff. Anybody who committed a crime in his county was taking a long, long chance. And I already had one strike on me. He had his eye on me. I was a marked man, and he was probably having me watched. I had to get down there and do it and get back without Tate’s knowing I had left town.

How?

I rolled over on my back and lay staring up at the ceiling. I not only had to get past the Sheriff; I had to fool Gloria. There was no telling what a thing like that would do to her. She’d probably crack up if she ever found it out.

How? How? How?

And what about Sutton himself? I knew by this time I was dealing with no fool. He was plenty smart, and he was armed. I thought about the guns. He had that Junior League automatic, a .22 rifle, and a shotgun. And then I began to get it.

I sat up in bed.

It didn’t come to me all at once. It took a long time to work it all out, step by step, thinking of all the possibilities and when I was through it was dawn. It was a hot, breathless dawn, the way it is before a storm, and as the sun came up I looked out across the back yard at the high board fence splashed with crimson. Red in the morning, I thought, sailor take warning.

It meant nothing except that it would probably rain by tonight. I turned on my side and went to sleep.

I awoke around noon with a bad taste in my mouth and my body drenched with perspiration. Outside the sun was a brassy glare, and there was no whisper of a breeze. I walked uptown and bought the Houston paper and took it into the restaurant, propping it up before me while I drank some orange juice. I remembered none of the news, even while I was reading it, but this had to look like any other Sunday. I was tight and nervous, for I could feel that cold-eyed Sheriff looking over my shoulder at every move I made. It had to be natural from start to finish, for he had a merciless eye for anything that didn’t fit.

It was a day that would never end. Around five o’clock I drove over to the Robinsons’, but Gloria had gone out about an hour ago, they said. I talked to them for a few minutes, and then left, unable to sit still. Time crawled. Tension was building up already, and I still had hours to go.

I went back about seven and she was home. She’d gone for a ride to try to cool off, she said. We went over to the county seat to an air-conditioned movie, trying to escape our thoughts and the heat. On the way home she was depressed and silent and nothing I could do would bring her out of it. There was a feeling she was more than usually upset by Sutton and that she wanted to tell me something, but she never did. When we got back to town she said she had a headache and wanted to go to bed early. I left her at the gate.

I parked the car in front of the rooming house and went on through to my room. I was going to stay there all night, just in case Tate had orders to check on me from time to time. Looking at my watch, I saw it was almost eleven. I changed clothes, putting on dark slacks, a blue sports shirt, and black shoes. I left the light burning for a while, as if I were reading, and after about a half hour I turned it out and lay down on the bed. The landlady’s room was directly above mine, and I could see the light from her window shining out into the back yard. In another twenty minutes it went out.

I waited. The whole house was deathly still now. I tried to quiet my nerves by thinking how it would be afterwards, of Galveston and a honeymoon in November, and all the years ahead. It would work for a few minutes and then I’d be tightened up again, thinking of what had to be done first, of Sutton lying there in the cabin, waiting for me maybe, or at least alert and knowing the risk he was running, and of the gun which wouldn’t be very far from his hand. And then I’d think of the Sheriff and the fact that this time the game we were playing wasn’t only for keeps, but forever. It made me cold thinking about it, but there wasn’t any other way. Sutton had asked for it. He’d get it.

I struck a match and looked at my watch. It was an hour since the landlady’s light had gone out. I got softly off the bed and stood up. It was time to go.

T
HERE WAS A SCREEN DOOR
leading from my room into the backyard. I eased it open, an inch at a time, and slipped out, and closed it very gently. The night was heavily overcast and so dark I couldn’t see the gate. I knew where it was, though, and moved towards it, keeping on the grass to muffle any sound. Then my hands were on the gate, feeling for the latch. I opened it and eased out into the alley.

I went over to the car lot, walking fast and avoiding street lights, and slipped up to it from the rear. I eased around the corner of the shack, put the key in the lock, and stepped inside, closing the door after me. I didn’t need any light to find the cigar box which held the ignition keys; it was in the top drawer of my desk and I located it by feel. Carrying it over to a corner away from the windows, I squatted down so my body would shield the flame, and struck a match. All the keys had round cardboard tags with numbers on them, and it took me only a second or two to find the one I wanted. It was the key to the Ford which was parked down at the end of the line where the shadows were heaviest and I could pull right out into the cross street without going on to Main at all. I put the others back in the desk and slipped out and closed the door.

I stood between two cars and peered out, looking up Main. A block and a half up the lights of the restaurant poured out into the night, but there was no one on the street. The constable would be inside, probably, drinking coffee. I ducked back and climbed into the Ford, reaching for the starter. The motor turned over slowly, as if the battery was weak. I jabbed it again, and it caught this time.

It’s all right, I thought. Driving out there will charge it up. I got it in gear and rolled out into the cross street, not turning on the lights until I was off the lot. Going over two blocks, I turned left and ran parallel to Main until I was in the edge of town, and then cut back and got on the highway. There was very little traffic. I met only two or three cars. I made the turnoff, feeling my stomach tighten up, and started uphill through the pines. As I passed the old farm I turned my head and looked towards the barn and wished I’d never heard of the money that was buried there.